Among tourism actors

Helsinki, -12 degrees

I have now been working about three weeks as a substitute at the Tourist Office of Helsinki. Although it’s not a new work place for me, I feel that things have changed since I got the new position. I now feel as a part of my working team, and even my way of thinking has started to change.

I’ve been to a couple of events now where I’ve had the chance to meet other persons active in the tourism field here in Helsinki and it’s so exciting to finally have faces to the companies involved in the touristic growth and wellbeing of my favorite city in the world :) Only once you’ve met the persons that make Helsinki into the city it is, you can truly have an understanding for how it works. In that sense, you don’t merely feel like a part of the team you have at your workplace, but of the whole tourism field in Helsinki. Even though we’re of different ages, we have at least one thing in common: a mutual love for Helsinki. All of us want to bring out the best sides of the city and see it grow. Surprisingly all the actors in tourism are friendly and open to co-operation. They’re also open minded and unprejudiced towards new, young actors in the field.

Helsinki is such a great city, both as a working place and a living place. One of the reasons for this is the fact that Helsinki is one of the few cities in Europe growing in a radical way. Every time I attend an event talking about the future of Helsinki I am astonished by all the projects going on. Sometimes I wish I would have been born in Helsinki some 20 or 30 years later just because of all the changes that are heading our way.

Yesterday I got to hear Johanna Kurkela, a Finnish singer. Usually I don’t listen to music in Finnish but sometimes an exception has to be made when you find such a great voice that you cannot go without listening to it. I was happy to realize that Johanna was also very down to earth, a likeable person in real life. That makes the music even more pleasing! Dare yourself to listen to music sang in Finnish and find her songs on YouTube for instance. One of my favorites is the song “tuo se mulle”.